Sybase has some unusual features:
- Column names and table names are case sensitive
- Subqueries cannot include TOP 1 or ORDER BY
- Queries with max(COLUMN_NAME) and an ORDER BY seem to ignore the WHERE clause. Removing ORDER BY seems to fix this.
- Column names are 30 characters max
- Join syntax is: left_table [inner | left [outer] | right [outer]] join right_table on left_column_name = right_column_name
- Can’t do boolean operations in SELECT (eg, =, > <), but can do mathematical operations (eg, +, -) in SELECT clause
Nick Carroll
You are feeling my pain now. There is no timestamp data type, has a weird syntax for DELETE, you can’t delete too many records from a large table otherwise you run out of space in the transaction log, DECIMAL defaults to a scale of 0 so you immediately lose precision, using CHAR(3) inserts 3 blank characters by default when you might prefer null instead for the field, and the list goes on.
Sybase is the most data averse database that I have ever used. If you want a rock solid RDBMS then you can’t go pass Oracle or PostgreSQL.
JackU
If you want a rock solid RDBMS and awesome developer tools, then you can’t go pass SQL Server!